Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale

by Pugh, Shewanda

She dropped the bottle when their eyes finally met.

  No. This couldn’t be. Not after so much. Not after forgiveness had been given.

  She went wild at the thought. Tak, her husband, had done what Deena never could. He’d swallowed past the pain of his mother’s polluted love, never retching when it made him sick. Every day for more than a decade, his mother, this addict, walked out on her children anew. But she had cleaned up for him, gone sober on the day that her son nearly died.

  “He loves you,” Deena said. “When your husband called you a worthless common drunk, Tak stood by you. He defended you, though God knows you never earned his loyalty. You can’t even figure out how to be conscious for him, let alone anything resembling a mother.”

  Hatsumi Tanaka stared, gray eyes glistening and watery, nostrils flared, lips hammered shut. Then her gaze dropped to the Belvedere and Deena’s brain fractured. She snatched the bottle and hurled it at her mother-in-law’s head.

  Tak’s mother ducked. A thousand shards and sprayed liquor burst against the wall like fireworks. Deena grabbed another bottle and another from the bar, hurling top shelf liquor, glass chunks, anything, at that same stretch of wall.

  This woman didn’t deserve Tak. She didn’t deserve a son who could forgive neglect, indifference, and isolation, or a son who would protect a mother who had never protected him. She was a wound, a heartache, a nothing. Deena screamed it with all the fury suffocating pain could muster.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A stumble step away from Tak’s mother and away from the reek of liquor, had her wading through molasses, stomach lurching, vision convoluted as collapsed into the wrong someone.

  “Deena?” Mike said. “Deena, what’s happened?”

  She heard voices, growing closer too soon. Knowing what she looked like, what she smelled like, and the mess she’d left behind—

  “Mike, the door. Don’t let them see.”

  He scurried to the single exit, hit the lock, and returned quick, hands at her elbows, holding her up.

  “Jesus, Deena. You’re bleeding. What’s happened?”

  She looked down at her hands. Blood painted one, a shard embedded in the other.

  The door behind Mike rattled and he shot it a worried look. His gaze swept left, then right, before he pulled Deena away, down a side hall as shouts and laughter closed in from another direction.

  “Upstairs,” Mike decided, and up and away they went.

  Mike locked the bathroom door and led Deena to take a seat on the toilet. After testing the latch, he opened first the medicine cabinet, then the cabinets underneath, in search of a first aid kit. He came away with a telltale white box affixed with the Red Cross logo.

  “What happened?” he said. “Who did this to you?”

  His gaze drifted down to her hands, halting at the shard streaked in blood. After murmuring something about not knowing how he could miss that, he turned on the running water, rinsed her hands, and yanked the glass free in a single move. Armed with a compress dressing, he applied pressure to her sliver of a wound.

  “You’re shaking,” he said, slight fingers wrapped round her wrist. Like Tak, he had the hands of a man meant to be an artist, slim long fingers suited for music, art, leisure.

  “I’m angry,” Deena said. “So hurt and angry I can’t think.”

  She was shaking, balling her toes, grinding her teeth, and wishing she could have another go at her mother-in-law. All she could think of was assault.

  Her eyes met Mike’s. Narrowed and far more set back than her husband’s, they had the look of someone frozen in uncertainty. A curious look, Deena thought. For the first time, she felt no pressing need to look away.

  She took in his features. The lines and shape of his face stood sharp as a rough sketch, and his eyes—she’d misjudged them—they were lighter and softer than expected. Not a midnight brown, but a soft walnut, ringed in a tinge of sienna. And the downward turn of his mouth. Was it a constant, as sure as this hue of his eyes, or was it because of her and the state he’d found her in?

  Mike swallowed, cheeks red as if they’d been rubbed. He dropped his gaze, steadied, then looked up at her once again.

  “I think,” he said and rummaged in the first aid kit for cotton swaths. “That when people upset us, really upset us, the person we’re most angry with is our self. For not seeing, being smarter, or anticipating some flaw or eventuality. We punish ourselves because it gives us a sense of control; it usurps someone else’s power. We go from ‘you did this to me,’ to ‘I let you do this to me,’ which is far more reassuring than the idea that things just happen to us and we can do nothing to stop them.”

  Water on, Mike stuck both her palms in for a rinse. Together, they watched as crimson became pink and pink became clear.

  “I see you with your family,” Mike said, earning a jerk of the arm from her. He shot her a look, meant to steady and scold, and she went back to stillness for the meantime.

  “I see you with your family,” he repeated. “And I see that you and I are more alike than I ever anticipated.”

  Deena’s underwater hand clenched into a fist. Finger by finger, Mike unraveled it.

  “Growing up, I hated when Tak came to visit,” he said. “John would throw me off and run straight for him every time. His ‘best friend’ was what he called him, never mind that I was his brother. They had secret toys and special games and jokes I couldn’t understand. Everyone—and I mean everyone—has always treated him like the prodigal son come home. It’s Tak that makes me invisible on a good day and intolerable on a bad one.” Mike turned off the water and fed her an even stare. “Which one does that to you, Deena?”

  “My mother,” was what she finally said.

  Mike went to work dressing her wounds. If her revelation startled him, he hid it well.

  Despite the volume of blood, Deena had only the one cut that required any serious attention, all others took only antiseptic.

  “You never told me what happened,” Mike said when he rose from the work he’d done.

  Deena looked down at her hands. He’d taken his time with them, tending each wound with gentle deliberateness. Oddly enough, she’d been reminded of her own mother and her childhood, reminded of the way she’d touch each hurt as if wanting it for herself instead. Deena opened her mouth without realizing it and launched into the discovery of Tak’s mother.

  When she finished, Mike dropped onto the edge of the tub, heavy with the weight of speechlessness.

  “I have this old memory,” he said, “old enough to make me wonder if it’s true. Snippets come as smoke sometimes, as screaming, shattered glass, and pain. In the dark, a baby cries—he cries enough to suffocate. I want to help him; I want to reach him, but I can’t, because my shoulder’s shattered.”

  “It’s a dream,” Deena whispered. “A recurrent fear of some unknown thing.”

  Mike yanked aside the collar of his shirt.

  There, from shoulder to neck, was a thin white scar of careful design.

  “I sustained a broken collarbone at some point in my life,” Mike said. “Clearly, I’ve undergone surgery. Though no one seems willing to tell me about it.”

  He released his shirt and the simple tee went back to hiding old wounds.

  “My aunt doesn’t drive,” Mike said. “She doesn’t even own a car. I asked her once, when I was small, if she wouldn’t like the independence that one would bring. She answered that some people lose independence for a reason.”

  Deena had the sudden, irrepressible urge to clamp hands over her ears, to stave off the certainty of impending horror.

  “The Internet is a wonderfully fascinating thing,” Mike said. “A search on Tak’s mother turned up a record—a very old record—for 3rd degree DUI felony with serious bodily harm.”

  Her gaze dropped to the ghost wound on his shoulder. Air, she realized, was extremely hard to find.

  “She hurt…you?”

  It didn’t seem right to say aloud, didn’t seem even poss
ible, yet somehow those words were the only words she could manage.

  The bathroom door rattled off its hinge. Deena swallowed her leap of fear and glanced around wild for what she’d been meaning to do. Mike, one step ahead, hurriedly shoved first aid supplies back in their box.

  “Who’s in here?” Tak demanded through the door.

  She remembered her smell of alcohol and splashed water onto her face. Mike, who moved as harried as her, dampened a washcloth and dabbed at her face.

  “There,” he said, breathlessly. “Like new.”

  She could feel his heart, hammering away at his chest, and hers, just near it, tearing its way to her stomach.

  When the door rattled again, Deena hurled it open.

  Her husband sucked in all the air.

  They stared at each other, man and wife, smoldering uncertainty between them. Should she try to explain? Should she wait for him? Could she even keep her thoughts together?

  “The door,” Tak said. “It was locked.”

  Lies bubbled up to the surface. Easy lies, simple lies that could hurt no one and nothing. So, her mouth moved. Oh, did her mouth move. But not a single sound came out.

  “Excuse me,” Deena finally said. “I have to…I have to go.”

  She squeezed past her husband and scurried away, only to pause at the top of the stairwell. She straightened her dress, hesitated, and thought, I probably shouldn’t have done that. Just a few steps behind her, Mike squeezed past Tak, head down and hurried to get away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Boxes of Christmas decorations spilled onto the punctuated marble floor of the entrance hall. Streamers and tri-colored lights, tinsels, and ornaments of varying designs sat pristine and anxious to share the holiday cheer. Motown Christmas classics crooned out of a hijacked radio left by the previous homeowners. Prior to Tak fiddling with it, the kids had been trying out some new dance shuffle to the sound of something obscenely grating.

  They lingered near an imported spruce so pompous and stuffed, that a tilt of the head and the arms spread wide could take up neither width nor height of the tree. They made plans to adorn it to capacity, seemingly with every ornament, bulb fixture, and figurine sculpted by man’s hand. Every opened box brought an argument with it, passionate bickering about color scheme and distribution, interlaced with an endless shuffle of quitting and rejoining the group. As they worked, half a dozen guys moved the piano from ballroom to entrance hall, shouting orders and complaints and threats with every inch. Once situated, they buried the static-ridden stereo in favor of more playing from Tony. He warmed up with scales as the others joined the family in fighting over decorations.

  Still, things weren’t bad. Not everyone present was Christian. Out there in the world, such a revelation was but a footnote for the day. With her family, it was evidence of some deviation. Before marriage, Deena’s greatest fear had been that each holiday season would be a nightmare of contention, grating away at their marriage, grinding it down to bitterness. But the opposite had happened. Her husband, who had once described himself as an ambivalent Buddhist, had neither taken nor demanded, willing instead to leave religion as a choice for each child. Meanwhile, husband and wife celebrated all things together, from the exchanging gifts on Christmas to the lighting of bonfires at the Obon Festival.

  Tony launched into a complicated, full bodied luster of a gentle classic Deena couldn’t quite name. Head down and traversing the length of the keyboard, he played as he always did: unobtrusive, serene, angelic. Notes drifted and manipulated once airborne, nuanced, graceful, intimate. Tak, ever the doting father, looked on with unadulterated pride. Tony, as if sensing him, flung a grin his way before tumbling, headlong into a bursting cacophony of playful notes.

  “Showoff,” Tak mouthed and clapped him on the back, to which his son wriggled eyebrows in response.

  The music steadied, mellowing out to an upbeat festive number. Tak crossed the room with mischief in his smile, took Aunt Caroline’s hand and whispered in her ear. She cocked a skeptic brow and he stepped back, put a hand to his abdomen, and sashayed his hips, eyes closed. Caroline threw back her head and hooted, before allowing Tak to lead her to the center of room. Once there, he took her waist in one hand and drew up their clasped hands in the other, before the two began an exaggerated sway. Small steps to and fro; fractured by cackles of laughter, mashed toes, and accusations of poor dancing.

  Deena tried to imagine a man—any man—conjuring affection in old sour-mouthed Caroline. Snake charmer, she thought wryly. Another addition to the resume of her husband.

  “I do wonder where he gets it from,” Daichi said, voice low and suddenly at her side. “I’ve all the charisma of an executioner, while his mother’s most content comatose.”

  He tipped up his glass of orange juice just as Deena stole a glance his way.

  “I know,” he said. “About what happened in the billiard room, that is.”

  “I…” she blinked, wondering where all her words had gone.

  Tony flashed into a frantic melody, a rush of shoulder-jerking symphony. Tak responded by swinging out Caroline, abandoning her there, and dropping down on the bench next to his son. Tony scooted to accommodate him and the playing of one, flew fluid into two. Tak’s smooth, raw, deceptively velvet voice slipped in, infected with his inability to stop smiling. Tony followed, voice measured and aware, a musician wielding yet another instrument with care. Son was all shade and delicate harmony to his father’s playful torch of emotion.

  “You haven’t told him,” Daichi said, eyes impassive on his son and grandson.

  “I—”

  Deena halted as the bottom dropped out of Tak’s voice as he crooned about the meanness of the Grinch. Tony flooded into the song smooth, seamless, as earnest as if he performed Silent Night.

  “Your wife,” Deena said, remembering her conversation with Mike. “She doesn’t…drive, does she?”

  Daichi shot her a look of scalding impatience.

  “Ask what you intend to,” he said. “I require no preamble.”

  Fine then, Deena thought, even as ice spread through her belly. She had a relationship with her father-in-law that no one else had managed. They were direct with each other, forthcoming, and she knew more about him than most. If she asked a question of Daichi, she knew that she’d get the answer.

  And that was why the fear set in.

  “Why doesn’t your wife ever drive?” Deena said.

  It seemed as good a question to start with as any.

  The music slowed. New Orleans blues slow. Jukebox slow. Crawling, gritty, sweat slipping down the face kind of slow. Tak belted out a roar of ridiculous magnitude, earning a whoop of approval from the Hammonds.

  Tony mouthed “showoff” and proceeded to showoff himself.

  “The state of Florida revoked her license several decades ago,” Daichi said, answering Deena’s question.

  She let the words hang there awhile.

  “Why?” she said eventually.

  Daichi threw back his juice.

  “Driving under the influence with serious bodily harm. A third degree felony in Florida.”

  She hadn’t been sure whether she’d believed Mike’s speculations, even if his tone had been steady and convincing. But this? She had no choice but to believe this.

  “Mike has a scar,” she hurried on, like one with too much momentum to stop the fall. “Is that where the charge comes from?”

  “Partly,” Daichi said. “Though Takumi and Jonathan suffered injuries they were too young to remember.”

  The baby. The crying baby Mike was desperate to help was his little brother.

  “How long has she struggled with this?” Deena said.

  Her father-in-law frowned.

  “Too long for anyone to be sure,” he said. “Off again then on again, then on with no off.”

  “So, she’s always been like this?”

  Daichi looked at her in surprise.

  “No,” he said. “Not always.”


  Their object of discussion entered the room. Silent, graceful, ethereal, her makeup had been redone in smoky shadows, delicate blush, and dramatic lashes. She’d slipped into a sleek, flattering avant-garde sheath of teal. Deena looked from her mother-in-law to herself in bewilderment. How was it that she sustained not a hint of their earlier altercation, while Deena suffered through a handful of bandages and clothes that required constant readjusting?

  “It started with the boredom,” Daichi said. “Lonely housewife, unfulfilled. Surely, you’ve heard of it.”

  On the piano, Tony had turned his attention to a loping, dramatic melody, all vestiges of holiday cheer gone. Deena recognized it as one of those larger-than-life ballads that graced the Billboard charts a generation ago. When her husband’s sonorous quality slipped in, it was with the delicate incision required. Deena was torn between finishing her conversation with Daichi and fleeing, as her husband took a special kind of joy out of mortifying via serenade.

  “Boredom?” Deena echoed. “That sounds a little incredible to believe. And dismissive.”

  “The answer doesn’t fit your practical nature, your need for order in the storm.” He eyed her with something that bordered on interest. “I met my wife when we were both students at Harvard. Clearly, she had aspirations beyond that of trophy piece. You’re a plainly ambitious woman. Would you be satisfied with the domesticated role?”

  She thought back to their earlier conversations, back when her relationship with Tak was unknown to him. Back when Daichi functioned as her boss, mentor, and friend even. He’d said that she’d never be sated with the “trappings of mediocrity,” with a “subservient role as wife and mother.” Did this same fire of dissatisfaction consume Tak’s mother? Deena knew that Hatsumi, several years younger than Daichi, had left school to marry him after Tak had been conceived. But so many years had lapsed, years where she threw herself into a bottle instead of resurrecting dreams. It was the mark of cowardice, the mark of weakness to Deena.

  When her sister, Lizzie, had been addicted to everything Deena could work the winding path to her destruction out in her head. Little supervision, suffocating poverty, and exposure to criminal elements were all constant norms. Her choices, while appalling, had explanations backed by twisted reasoning. All Hatsumi had was never ending boredom.